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> There are many things that doctors do not recommend because they don't believe the average person can use it correctly. > ...She told me that they don't usua

by ardy42 6y ago

> There are many things that doctors do not recommend because they don't believe the average person can use it correctly. > ...She told me that they don't usually prescribe that one because they don't trust the parents of their patients to correctly administer one drug only twice per day (A) when giving the other drug (C) 3 times (they are worried about overdoses of the twice daily medication A). I wonder if they're not even worrying about "the average person", but a kind of "lowest common denominator" person. Depending on how severe an "overdose" is, that might be totally the right call. Even if only 1 in 100 patients would mess up and OD, prescribing the less-effective combination would actually end up helping a lot of patients. IMHO, software engineers also end up infantilizing their users with similar "lowest common denominator" thinking, but usually with less justification.

vlovich123 6y ago
Have you ever dealt with support tickets or read "normal" user forums for a consumer product that you work on? PEBKAC is often times a kind way to describe the problem. Now engineers can (& do) get the analysis wrong (the famous "I can't send e-mail more than 500 miles). I don't think it happens with any less regularity than doctors. Thankfully our problem domain allows us to adjust the guard rails for a problem domain, or build better guard rails.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Have you ever dealt with support tickets or read "normal" user forums for a consumer product that you work on? PEBKAC is often times a kind way to describe the problem. I totally understand that, but I think it's far less justifiable to design non-safety-critical systems for a brainless lowest common denominator user than it is for things that are arguably safety-critical (like the dosing mentioned in the GGP), because then you end up with something like a world where the only books available (even to adults) are children's books.
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    Users also want free support. The more knobs you add the more complex your support becomes (both front line and automated tests) and your support costs skyrocket (now 1% of your users are turning on knobs you haven’t tested and those are 30% of your support costs). There’s a balance to be struck for sure and OSS can some times try to ignore the support cost because it’s just “spare time”. There’s still a cost though. There’s also something to be said for sensible abstractions. Even if the power users don’t have the control they want, the solution works for 90% of all other users. For an example of this look to Apple. They regularly sacrifice the power users for the security and convenience of the general customer. From a profit, support and just pure “% of satisfied users” that’s the right balance. Don’t get me wrong. They don’t get it right for every single little thing, but in aggregate when there’s a conflict and your market is the “general” user, trying to stay appealing to the power users is still likely the wrong choice.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > There’s also something to be said for sensible abstractions. Even if the power users don’t have the control they want, the solution works for 90% of all other users. There's something to be said for writing some things in some kind of Simple English [1], but it's quite different to take the position that most things should be written in it. Too often modern system designers seem to take something analogous to the latter position. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English
sebastialonso 6y ago
IMO this is infantilizing is completely justified in many fields, but not all. Ignorant people are like children, infantiles. And we are ignorant in different things, by in many things. There's a reason you infantilise infantiles, do you not?

by ardy42 6y ago

vlovich123 6y ago

Have you ever dealt with support tickets or read "normal" user forums for a consumer product that you work on? PEBKAC is often times a kind way to describe the problem. Now engineers can (& do) get the analysis wrong (the famous "I can't send e-mail more than 500 miles). I don't think it happens with any less regularity than doctors. Thankfully our problem domain allows us to adjust the guard rails for a problem domain, or build better guard rails.

ardy42 6y ago
> Have you ever dealt with support tickets or read "normal" user forums for a consumer product that you work on? PEBKAC is often times a kind way to describe the problem. I totally understand that, but I think it's far less justifiable to design non-safety-critical systems for a brainless lowest common denominator user than it is for things that are arguably safety-critical (like the dosing mentioned in the GGP), because then you end up with something like a world where the only books available (even to adults) are children's books.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  Users also want free support. The more knobs you add the more complex your support becomes (both front line and automated tests) and your support costs skyrocket (now 1% of your users are turning on knobs you haven’t tested and those are 30% of your support costs). There’s a balance to be struck for sure and OSS can some times try to ignore the support cost because it’s just “spare time”. There’s still a cost though. There’s also something to be said for sensible abstractions. Even if the power users don’t have the control they want, the solution works for 90% of all other users. For an example of this look to Apple. They regularly sacrifice the power users for the security and convenience of the general customer. From a profit, support and just pure “% of satisfied users” that’s the right balance. Don’t get me wrong. They don’t get it right for every single little thing, but in aggregate when there’s a conflict and your market is the “general” user, trying to stay appealing to the power users is still likely the wrong choice.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > There’s also something to be said for sensible abstractions. Even if the power users don’t have the control they want, the solution works for 90% of all other users. There's something to be said for writing some things in some kind of Simple English [1], but it's quite different to take the position that most things should be written in it. Too often modern system designers seem to take something analogous to the latter position. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English

sebastialonso 6y ago

IMO this is infantilizing is completely justified in many fields, but not all. Ignorant people are like children, infantiles. And we are ignorant in different things, by in many things. There's a reason you infantilise infantiles, do you not?